“I think the
whole notion of luxury is continuously evolving, particularly as we
speak,”Richard
Geoffroy, Cellar Master of Dom Pérignon, tells me as we sit over
coffee in his suite in Claridge’s.“Luxury is less about status, it's
more about the experience. In terms of wine, the experience has
been there forever. It's difficult to have anything more
experiential than wine—you ingest and you absorb—and now experience seems to be
the‘buzz’thing.
There's a real aspiration for Dom Pérignon and its emotions,
sensorial journey and experience. So to me, this makes Dom
Pérignon‘luxury
revisited’.”Undeniably,
Dom Pérignon is at the zenith of the luxury wine world, and on that
note, the oenophile“unashamedly” believes this and underlines his point
with:“Dom Pérignon
is the most progressive wine brand of all.”

I can’t help but be impressed at
Geoffroy’s passion
for fine wine, life and his work as he eloquently reels off
charming comments with wit and the occasional“voila!”. Born and raised in Champagne, his
family has always been in the wine business and it was as if his
path had already been written. Yet as with a lot of us, he had his
rebellious moment, despite it being a rather tame one. Rather than
following his friends to Kathmandu in the 1970s
(“who went there to
smoke who knows what”), he went and studied medicine and graduated with a
doctorate. Has it helped him? You’d think that a degree of scientific
understanding would be beneficial to his line of work?“I would say it has helped
me in developing the intuition, instinct and understanding of a
living substance,”Geoffroy replies.

"There's a real aspiration for Dom Pérignon and its
emotions, sensorial journey and experience."

In 1990, Geoffroy became Cellar
Master (or‘Chef de
Cave’) of Dom
Pérignon and has been at the helm of the luxury conglomerate
LVMH’s most
prestigious wine label ever since. Dom Pérignon is of course
strictly vintage-only champagne that’s aged for a minimum of seven years.
Each vintage is created from the finest grapes grown in that
particular year but is dependent on the harvest, which is in turn
dependent on perfect weather conditions. Many winegrowers are able
to forecast whether it’s going to be a vintage year, but for Geoffroy
it’s not
necessary.“I don't
even need to forecast,”he says.“I
just have to do my job in that time [six to seven months following
the harvest] and I will be fine. I know that in Champagne, many
winemakers pride themselves on being able to forecast and foresee
the future. I am not interested in forecasting anything, why? To
control and to master.”

So what determines the
harvest?“Well,
most of all, sunlight. Often people think heat, but heat is not
necessary.”Geoffroy continues, and explains that grapes react to
sunlight, rather than heat because the ripening process is
determined by photosynthesis and of course“sensible”rainfall is a crucial factor.The whole process sounds rather temperamental,
reliant on perfect weather, but it only serves to reinforce how Dom
Pérignon refuses to settle for anything less than
perfection. “We have a constant reminder from Mother Nature
that we are totally at the mercy of the weather,” says Geoffroy,
who believes it is this reliance on the elements that makes Dom
Pérignon a truly “humble brand”. Dom Pérignon’s vineyards
produce two variants of grape, Pinot noir
and Chardonnay, which then form the basis of the champagne. Yet
there is no strict ratio of grape-to-grape variety, as each vintage
differs from the preceding and succeeding year.“Depending on vintage, it could be as
high as 60% Pinot noir, and other years 60% Chardonnay. For
instance, our 2003 was 60% Pinot and our 2002 was 60%
Chardonnay.”

Whilst the grape variety is specific
to each of Dom Pérignon’s vintages, their newest creation, the P2-1998,“is about blending and
creating”instead
of conforming to any prerequisite ratios. The P2-1998 is in fact
55% Chardonnay and 45% Pinot noir—and Geoffroy refers to it as his“greatest
discovery”. How so?
Essentially, Dom Pérignon’s 1998 vintage has gone through a
second stage of maturation (a second plenitude) whereby the result
has magnified its characteristics and has taken it up a stage in
terms of the sensorial experience you receive when it hits your
palate. During the second maturation stage, which is roughly 16
years, the wine is left on the‘lees’in the dark seclusion of the chalk caves beneath
the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay, which intensifies its flavour
profile. It’s sweet
and creamy with rich notes of honeycomb, which is split right open
through sharp notes of citrus and ripe apricot. This is because the
1998 harvest was lent its character care of a very hot August
followed by heavy rainfall in September, which forced the house to
push back the harvest to take advantage of Mother
Nature’s
gift.

"It’s older yet more energised,
it’s a sort of
paradox.”

In discussing the P2,
Geoffroy’s
omnipresent enthusiasm for what he does increases
exponentially.“I
would say the P2 is more luxury than anything,”he states.“Its luxury is that element of
surprise. The P2-1998 is actually more energised than the 2006.
Ithas succeededagainst the odds and conventions. It’s older yet more energised,
it’s a sort of
paradox”. And
despite Dom Pérignon’s exceptional creation—and taking into account the fact that they have
not changed in over 100 years—the P2 is housed in their iconic, dark and elegant
bottle, which again, is a paradox in itself. You’d think that they might switch it up
in celebration, but evidently not, and it’s without a doubt one of the most
instantaneously recognisable bottles in the world.“Our three pointed shield
has been that way forever, and yet we allow ourselves to play with
it,”says Geoffroy.
In their unprecedented history, the brand have collaborated with
the likes of Jeff Koons, David Lynch and Iris van Herpen, all of
which underlines Geoffroy’s earlier point, that they are a
progressive wine brand. Yet despite all the changes, both to their
bottles and the P2 (there’s also P3 which is the result of some
30-40 years of extra maturation), Dom Pérignon is still heralded as
the ultimate luxury champagne brand, and rightly so. Their history,
creations and progressive attitude are fiendishly
unmatched.